Friday, August 28, 2015

Ohio University student Rachel Baker plans to retweet the full name of anyone accused of sexual harassment on the Twitter account she runs, @SpeakUpOU, and she doesn't seem to care if the report is a lie or mistaken. Baker explained why she would do such a thing with a non-sequitur: "I trust the people who would be sending these things because it’s an important issue."

Even assuming arguendo that Baker's intentions are noble, all of the noble intentions in the world can’t whitewash her appalling hostility to the rights of the presumptively innocent. This effort needs to be condemned by all persons of goodwill.

According to The Post, Baker "has no problem using the accused’s full name on her account, as she said she thinks it’s more important that people know that harassment is happening than whether or not it hurts someone’s reputation." Read this gem of an explanation: “Considering the fact that we live in a society where a man can be accused of raping a woman and, whether he did it or not, can be found not guilty and go on to get a sports scholarship, putting it out there probably won’t ruin their life,” Baker said. Baker then reduces men, as a class, to vile caricature by noting she believes one of the biggest problems is “toxic masculinity” and the social constructs that tell men to “be in control and have power” at all times and tell women to accept it. See here.

Baker has opened herself up to claims of libel if she is posting, without discrimination, claims that might be false. Her faith in her classmates claiming to be victims is woefully misplaced. This is a fact: of all the sexual assault claims where we are able to say, one way or the other, that they are true or false, a mind-boggling percentage are false. Accusations of sexual misconduct are often either mistaken or are fabrications, and that's not just my opinion. Feminist Brett Sokolow, the leader of the campus sexual grievance industry who has done more to shape colleges' sexual misconduct policies than anyone in America, last year wrote that he sees "case-after-case" where "sincere victims . . . believe something has happened to them that evidence shows absolutely did not . . . ." And: "We see complainants who genuinely believe they have been assaulted, despite overwhelming proof that it did not happen." And brace yourself: Mr. Sokolow suggested mental health issues play an important factor in these false accusations. Apparently, Rachel Baker would post, without hesitation, the spurious claims Mr. Sokolow referenced, including the full names of the victims (the victims being the falsely accused men).

Baker doesn't seem to appreciate that a hell of a lot of college women are--to be charitable--confused when it comes to the meaning of consent. A new Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation survey reveals that almost half of college women think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent. Only 51 percent--the barest of majorities--think "a nod in agreement" indicates consent. That is mind-boggling. Presumably, Rachel Baker would post, without hesitation, the claims of women who feel they were assaulted after giving a nod in agreement, including the names of the victims of these unjust claims. Even the National Institute of Justice has said that when it comes to rape surveys, some people don't give accurate survey answers, but it also noted the possibility that men and women may have different perceptions of the same incident.

Rachel Baker's brand of tyranny is nothing new, we've seen it many times. A group of current and former University of Chicago students created an anonymous Tumblr blog called the "Hyde Park List" listing the names of six male students and alumni who allegedly have perpetrated "gender-based violence" against other students. For 17 years, the University of Maryland famously sanctioned a Clothesline Project where alleged rape survivors were permitted to publicly display shirts with the full names of men they accused of rape written on them. There was no discussion about even the possibility that some of the men named might have been innocent. The university stopped the practice not out of respect for the men named but only because it realized the practice subjected it to liability. And there was the infamous Brown bathroom wall "rape list." Feminist icon Germaine Greer (who, by the way, once said this on a television broadcast: "Any woman of taste would have a boy for a lover rather than a man.") called for an online rapists' register "because we know the courts can't get it right."

The rhetoric employed to justify the modern-day vigilantism in these efforts rarely varies. It is a chilling echo of the lynch mobs gathered at the hanging trees of the old American South, without the lynching. Like the lynch mobs of old, these efforts are animated by a chilling hostility to the due process rights of the presumptively innocent. People with presumably noble intentions are waging the war on sexual violence with the memes of the hangman, as much as they would angrily deny it. The motivating impulse of the lynch mob was that the system could not adequately respond to rape by black men. As one writer put it, lynchings “are extraordinary measures demanded by extraordinary occasions.” Underlying the defense of lynchings was the assumption that rape accusers were “victims” just because they said so. The hangman and his sympathizers had no doubts about the guilt of the men and boys hanged –“their guilt was clear in every instance,” clucked one writer. Another explained: “. . . the utmost care is taken to identify the criminal and only when his identity is beyond question is the execution ordered.” And: “As the most careful precautions are taken against this result it is not a likely thing lest the wrong man is executed.” Due process wasn’t just unnecessary to the fair administration of justice when rape was alleged, it was a hindrance to the fair administration of justice. The criminal justice system was “incapable” of meting out the punishment that was needed, a punishment that spared the victims of “negro” atrocities the humiliation of testifying in courts.

In his State of the Union Address of 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt condemned the hanging of blacks by vigilantes. He quoted a religious leader of the day: “‘The mob which lynches a negro charged with rape will in a little while lynch a white man suspected of crime. Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob spirit that is threatening the integrity of this Republic.'”

Sadly, more than 100 years later, Teddy Roosevelt was right. The “mob spirit” is alive and well, and it isn’t targeting just black men (although black men still seem to be on the receiving end of the modern-day mob spirit more than anyone -- see here and here). It has wrapped itself in the mantle of political correctness and gussied itself up with PhD’s in Women’s Studies programs, and it uses broad brushes to attack "masculinity," something even RAINN said was wholly inappropriate.

_____________________________

Ohio University is the same school where angry students made it clear they don't care for due process when Prof. KC Johnson spoke there. It was also the school where a very public sex act led to unjust charges of rape. College students are notorious for bowing to peer pressure and marching in lockstep with their moral superiors, the campus anti-rape crusaders, but that school seems to be in special need of help.

In any event, the time is long overdue for all persons of goodwill to condemn efforts like Rachel Baker's twitter account.

In case you missed this important post yesterday: the "rape culture" crowd strikes again.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A fraternity at Old Dominion University has been suspended for hanging three banners from a balcony bearing these messages: “Rowdy and fun—hope your baby girl is ready for a good time,” “Freshman daughter drop off,” and “Go ahead and drop mom off too…” See here. They are the latest manifestation of a hook-up culture that detaches sex from emotional intimacy. Robby Soave summed it up: "Some frat brothers are eager to have sex with girls—is this surprising?"

If that seems over-the-top to the point of absurdity, Lafrance's explanation is even sillier. She harrumphs that such banners are not "distinct . . . from the prevalence of rape on college campuses." They are, rather, a manifestation of the dreaded "rape culture."

And when Moe konks Curly on the head with an over-sized mallet, it's evidence that we live in a "murder culture."

You see, to the chronically offended extremists who insist ours is a "rape culture," rape is "in the air"--it's like "The Force" in Star Wars, "it surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together." Has any other imaginary concept ever been invoked as often to mean so much and, really, nothing at all?

The fact is, lewd banners are neither "rape" nor is actual rape a cultural norm. The folks who get as worked up over a leer as a brutal rape, and who have no compunction about citing non-rape as evidence of rape, don't have the foggiest idea how prevalent campus rape really is or who commits it. Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson of Texas A&M has concluded that "pornography is no more linked to rape than violent games are to violent crimes" but to our moral superiors who dominate the public discourse on rape, facts are beside the point. When they insist these banners are a way station on the road to rape, they undermine the perceived integrity of every actual rape victim because their insane overreaction suggests that rape isn't a very serious problem--if it were, the rape pundits wouldn't be offering such crappy evidence for it. But, alas, this is a group prone toover-the-top overreactions when it comes to anything that remotely resembles men and sex.

One thing we can be fairly certain of: the boys who made the banners are neither rapists nor rapists-in-waiting because there is a chasm as forbidding and as difficult to cross as the Great Nefud Desert that separates horny frat men who openly brag about getting off from the small percentage of deviants who rape. But, hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good sexual grievance industry meta-narrative? When they cite the banners as more evidence for the "ban fraternities" movement, it's as compelling as Rolling Stone's manufactured gang rape of Jackie at UVA.

The real problem with the "rape culture" meme is that it foments rape hysteria and encourages young women to reduce young men to vile caricature and see them as predators. We can thank the "rape culture" hysteria for the fact that almost half of all college women--a full 44 percent--think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent. This sort of wrong-headed thinking translates into policy: the "rape culture" meme gives license to anti-due processors who are happy to chip away at critical rights of persons accused of sexual misconduct--that's not my opinion, it's a fact. The quartet of judicial decisions in the past several weeks supporting college men accused of sexual assault shows how terribly misguided the "rape culture" extremists are. We can expect a lot more favorable court decisions in the months ahead as the cases work their way through the judicial process in the wake of the mandates of the Department of Education's unjust "Dear Colleague" letter.

Regardless, there is no question that the extremists who trade in "rape culture" hysteria have done more to harm innocents on campus than the most ardent law-and-order conservatives -- ironically, the purveyors of the "rape culture" meme are otherwise among the last people who'd want to roll back due process rights, but when it comes to college men and sex, the term "man-haters" is not too strong to describe them. It is time to insist that RAINN's counsel be heeded and that the "rape culture" meme be mothballed once and for all. "Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime," according to RAINN. The "unfortunate" tendency to blame 'rape culture' for sexual assault," RAINN wrote, "has led to an inclination to focus on . . . traits that are common in many millions of law-abiding Americans (e.g., 'masculinity'), rather than on the subpopulation at fault: those who choose to commit rape." The extremists think they know better than the most prominent anti-rape organization in America.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The question of whether colleges should only report rape to law enforcement at the whim of the accuser is not merely absurd, it is unworthy of serious debate. That there is debate about the issue is an indication of the power of extremists on matters of college sexual assault.

If a student were brutally beaten, would anyone suggest a college should not report it without the accuser's consent? By failing to report, innocent students are put at risk. Rape is no different. The oft-repeated meme that requiring colleges to report to law enforcement will keep some victims from reporting is, of course, the worst kind of politicized bullshit. As Joe Cohn of FIRE has explained: "Requiring institutions to report allegations to police doesn’t require the complainant to cooperate with investigators." (In other words, it's like any other crime.) "If the alleged victim doesn’t want to talk to the police, he or she doesn’t have to. But without notifying police at all, authorities are left in the dark, without the opportunity to offer support and services to complainants, or discover other evidence to prosecute the crime."

To allow colleges to not report plays into the dangerous stereotypes that rape is a "different" kind of crime and that women are helpless children who need to be coddled.

It also sends out the unmistakable signal that college sexual assault really isn't a "crime-crime" like assault and armed robbery and murder. It's just a card college women ought to be allowed to play if they feel like it. Is that really what they want?

And, of course, almost everyone agrees that colleges are unqualified to investigate and do justice when it comes to thorny issues of she said-she said sexual assault.

So why are we even having this debate? We are having this debate because the usual suspects who dominate the public discourse on all things gender have created an empire of their own on college campuses, with the help of an extremist Department of Education that shares their philosophy. There, they have have created their own little pro-accuser system of "justice." What does that mean? You see, it has long been the ultimate goal of radical feminists to shift the burden of proof in sexual assault cases from the accuser to the accused (to force the accused to prove sex wasn't rape any time an accusation is lodged -- something that flips due process on its head), and they have been able to achieve this on campus. This goal of shifting the burden of proof is part and parcel of their extremist belief that we should automatically believe the accuser--and that belief is the animating impulse behind their hostility to the due process rights of the accused when it comes to sexual assault.

Make no mistake, once they are certain they've "won" on college campuses, they will try to bring their peculiar brand of "justice" to a courthouse near you, and that's a good reason to kill it now, before it gets bigger and bigger.

To involve law enforcement in college sexual assault accusations threatens the very foundations of their empire, and that is why they will do anything they can to oppose it. That these policies hurt innocent men and fail to protect innocent women is beside the point to these zealots. Those are not their concerns.

All persons of goodwill need to stand with the legal scholars who have condemned the extremists. And now, finally, as the cases of expelled men work their way through the judicial process, judges in a string of judicial decisions have joined the growing chorus.

Right will always win out in the end. Sometimes, terrible things need to happen first to awaken the good people to stand and say, "Enough!" We've now reached that point.

Friday, August 14, 2015

The summer is winding down, and as we start the weekend, I thought we should take a break today for a change of pace--off-topic stories we've written about average guys who did big things and little things that inspire. They are among my favorite posts on this blog, and I hope you like them:

Sunday, August 9, 2015

A landmark judicial decision was handed last week that will have important implications for college men wrongly accused of sexual assault. In Doe v. Washington & Lee Univ., 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102426 (W.D. Va. 2015), a federal judge appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton ruled that when a college promotes the idea that a woman's post-intercourse regret is tantamount to rape, it manufactures a climate of gender discrimination against male students that can "railroad" (the court's word, not mine) the innocent who are wrongly accused of sex offenses. Read the decision here--and I summarize it in the next section below. The Doe v. W&L decision is among the most important events for wrongly accused college men in a long time because it shines a light on the root cause of the so-called campus rape "epidemic"--something this blog has called the "regret asymmetry" that separates the sexes. Women, more than men, regret casual sex, and it is these unsatisfying sexual unions caused by regret--not rape--that is the real sex problem on campus. Read about it here.

What is chilling is the allegation in the case by the accused male student that a college administrator openly promotes the idea that regret is tantamount to rape--an idea that is absurd, unjust, and hateful all at the same time. Sadly, this thinking appears to be gaining ground among college women (see below), and it needs to be stopped. It is time for a national conversation about the single most important issue when it comes to campus sexual assault, the "regret asymmetry" that separates young men and women.

Doe v. W&L

In the Doe v. W&L case, a W&L student, pseudonymously called “John Doe,” sued W&L for, inter alia, violating Title IX (which forbids gender discrimination in colleges) in connection with his expulsion for alleged nonconsensual sexual intercourse with a W&L female student, pseudonymously called “Jane Doe.” W&L filed a motion to dismiss, which the court granted in part and denied in part. All of the facts in the case are taken from Doe's complaint--whether they are accurate will need to be proven at trial. Doe’s complaint averred that John and Jane met at a party then proceeded back to his room where Jane initiated sexual intimacy, and the two proceeded to have consensual sex. The next morning, he drove her home, and they exchanged phone numbers. Jane later told a friend she "had a good time.” Thereafter, John and Jane became Facebook “friends,” and John texted her, “. . . I felt like we had a pretty good connection,” and she responded, "haha I thought we did as well.”

Approximately one month after their initial encounter, they again had consensual sex. But then, Jane saw John at a party kissing another female and left upset. That summer, Jane went to work at a women's clinic that dealt with sexual assault issues. Seven months after the initial encounter, Jane visited a therapist, who said Jane’s had “an evolution” about how she felt about the initial encounter.

Thereafter, Jane attended a presentation by W&L's Title IX Officer, Lauren Kozak, who introduced an Internet article the court would later label “gender biased” against males to alleged that "regret equals rape." Kozak said that “everyone, herself included, is starting to agree with” that.

Almost nine months after the encounter in question, Jane initiated an internal disciplinary investigation of John. Ms. Kozak interviewed John and refused to allow him to involve an attorney. A hearing was held, and, among other irregularities, Jane was not asked about inconsistencies in her various statements about the encounter. After the hearing, Rolling Stone published an article about a later-debunked gang rape at UVA. The next day, W&L found John responsible for sexual assault. John maintained the decision was prompted to avoid a backlash similar to the one felt by UVA from the Rolling Stone article.

In the lawsuit he filed, John alleged all manner of bias in W&L's handling of his case, including ignoring evidence that supported his position. The court held that John Doe alleged sufficient facts – including the Title IX coordinator’s suggestion that regret is tantamount to rape – to plead a Title IX violation, and the court denied W&L’s motion to dismiss that claim. “Plaintiff's allegations, taken as true, suggest that W&L's disciplinary procedures . . . amount to ‘a practice of railroading accused students,’ and, if true, it amounts to gender bias.

Regret = Rape: The Sexual Grievance Industry's Latest Innovation

The loony purveyors of sexual grievances keep pushing the envelope to top their last inanity. Their latest and boldest effort is to equate regret with rape. The plaintiff in Doe v. W&L makes the chilling accusation that a college administrator openly equated regret with rape, and declared that this thinking is the wave of the future. Unfortunately for her, and her school, a federal judge has ruled that this sort of thinking can be gender discrimination against males.

Thankfully there are fair-minded jurists, because this sort of thinking already seems to be all the rage on campus. A college student recently wrote a jaw-dropping article about how she was "raped by rape culture." What does that mean? It means she clearly manifested her assent to have sex, but later claimed she secretly didn't want to have sex and only did so because the culture tells her she's supposed to.

And it isn't just isolated horror stories that suggest women think it's acceptable to say "yes" and later cry "rape" because of regret. In fact, we have evidence our daughters are being taught that a woman's "yes" can be transmogrified into a "no" after-the-fact if she regrets the encounter. A new Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that almost half of all college women-- full 44 percent--think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent. So if a guy proceeds to insert his penis in the woman's vagina after she nods "yes," he will be a rapist if she later decides she regretted the encounter. With all the tens of millions of dollars being spent on the "war on rape," almost half of all college women mistake consent for rape--and is it any wonder? Because this is what the sexual grievance industry teaches in waging the "war on rape," and too many of our daughters are buying it. We are raising a generation of nitwits.

But, you might protest, this wrong-headed thinking won't translate into policy. You would be wrong: they've already made it a punishable offense. When young men nag their dates for sex, and young women agree to have sex just to make them happy even though they secretly don't want to, they call it "sexual coercion," and innumerable colleges all across America have made it a punishable offense. Read that again: we are not talking women who have no reasonable alternative but to submit to sex, we are talking about women who freely choose to have sex for any number of reasons but later decide the male student ought to be punished for asking for it in the wrong way.

The "regret asymmetry" is at the heart of the campus rape "epidemic." But instead of working to reduce students' unsatisfying sexual encounters by educating them about this asymmetry, the sexual grievance industry wants to outright punish young men--and young men alone--whenever males and females act out the gender roles assigned to them by biology and the culture and women later decide the encounter was unsatisfying. "Consent" no longer means what the dictionary says it means--it has been co-opted by the sexual grievance industry and twisted and pounded beyond all recognition. Colleges are flooded not with rape victims, but with women groping for victimhood because their moral superiors--angry radical feminists--tell them to. Rape is never okay, but we're not talking about rape. Let us be blunt: we're talking about feminists teaching women that they have no responsibility even to tell the truth about whether they want to have sex. We're talking about a cry of "rape" being used to punish innocent young men simply because they can.

What To Do

We need to expose the inanity. We need to call them what they are--"hysterics, paranoids and boodlers"--and above all else, extremists. We need to explain to people that what they are promoting isn't a public policy, it's good old fashioned man-hating--a sort of gender get-evenism for millennials.

We need to divert all the resources being wasted on the "war on rape"--start with the the posters telling "men" as a class not to rape--and instead use them to teach our young people about the "regret asymmetry" that divides the sexes. We need to teach them that, alas, men and women are different, that young men have these things called "testicles" that give them an enhanced sex drive that (dare I say it?) makes men want to have sex more than women, and that men aren't hard-wired to be cautious about having sex the way women are since they can't pregnant. In short, we need to teach our young people all the things our parents taught us, and their parents taught them, because they're true.

And we need to teach our college administrators that regret is not tantamount to rape, and we need to fire the ones who teach that it is.

Finally, we need to teach college men to stop being so damn timid, to fight back, and to understand that an angry political lobby has a bulls-eye on their scrota for reasons having nothing to do with them.

How did we reach the point where insanity has become the norm when it comes to campus sex? We've reached that point because we've allowed gender zealots who subsist off tuition and tax dollars but who lack critical thinking skills to dominate the public discourse on these issues.

It's time to take back the night, for the wrongly accused, and to exile the extremists to the kids table where they belong.

The article below echoes a growing trend: the sexual grievance lobby is now insisting that when a women later regrets having sex, regardless of her outward manifestations of assent at the time of the act, it is a form of sexual assault. We've laughed off these idiotic assertions in the past, but it's clear that it's no laughing matter--it seems to be a trend. Here's an example:

I rolled out of bed around noon that day, in celebration of it being Saturday. After no fewer than 13 hours of drinking, I ended up at my friend Matt’s house. I had been flirting with him all night–and arguably all of my college career.

He wasn’t traditionally good-looking, but he was a notorious charmer with some serious bad boy in him that made him weirdly hot in a not-hot way. Even though we’d been strictly platonic since we met, I always felt a twinge of secret excitement when I had his attention, so when I found myself having a heart-to-heart with him in his bedroom, I felt a weird combination of emotions. Part of me felt as if I was 15 again. I was excited and nervous to be there. I was hyper aware of my body, and of his, wondering, maybe even hoping, he’d kiss me. Another part of me felt that this was wrong. Not in an “it’s wrong, but it’s hot and scandalous and I still want to do it” way–wrong as in not right, wrong as in uncomfortable. This was not a guy I wanted to get involved with. This was a guy who’d had anonymous girl after anonymous girl in and out of his bedroom since we were in the dorms. This was a guy with whom I’d had countless conversations about his inability to care about women, romantically. This was Matt. He interrupted my inner conflict with something that would have way more weight years later.

“I feel like you want me to make a move, just so you can turn me down,” he said.

Before I even had a chance to decide if he was right, we were making out. In my state of extreme intoxication, my mind was racing in search of a decision. This was exciting. This was fun. But this was also really, really weird, and ultimately, not a road I wanted to go down. I couldn’t decide if the excitement and lust in the air would win over the pit in my stomach. It wasn’t until he grabbed a condom that I really knew how I felt. I was not okay with this. I did not want to have sex with him.

But I did.

He slid inside me and I didn’t say a word. At the time, I didn’t know why. Maybe I didn’t want to feel like I’d led him on. Maybe I didn’t want to disappoint him. Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with the “let’s do it, but no, we shouldn’t” verbal tug-of-war that so often happens before sleeping with someone. It was easier to just do it. Besides, we were already in bed, and this is what people in bed do. I felt an obligation, a duty to go through with it. I felt guilty for not wanting to. I wasn’t a virgin. I’d done this before. It shouldn’t have been a big deal–it’s just sex–so I didn’t want to make it one.

I stared at the ceiling the whole time, occasionally flashing him the fake smile reserved for people you accidentally make eye contact with in the grocery store. I don’t think I moved the entire time, and I didn’t care if he noticed. I just wanted it to end, and I knew it wouldn’t be long. I just had to suck it up for a few minutes, let him do his thing, and it would be over. When it finally was, he smiled at me, kissed my forehead, and asked how it was. As we cuddled, I realized that what we had done was no different to him than the sex he’d had with anyone else. Overnight, I convinced myself it was no different to me, either.

I woke up with an “oh shit” feeling that quickly turned into an “oh well.” I didn’t really feel I’d been violated, though part of me knew I had. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t hurt. I didn’t want vengeance. I didn’t even feel weird around him soon after. I didn’t feel much of anything. I certainly didn’t feel like I’d been raped. But what had happened the night prior was not consensual sex, and I didn’t like it. I wanted the flirting. I wanted the kissing. I wanted the sleepover. But I didn’t want to go all the way. And that’s very hard to explain to a man who is just as drunk as you are.

There is not a word for my experience. The fact that there’s not a word for it makes us feel like it doesn’t exist. Or maybe there’s not a word for it because we’re pretending it doesn’t exist. But this weird place in between consensual sex and rape? It’s there. It does exist. And it’s happening all the time. As it turns out, almost every woman I spoke to had been there at some point or another:

“To be honest, it would have been awkward to say no, so I just did it.”

“I don’t feel like it was a huge deal. Sometimes you have to have lunch with girls you don’t want to have lunch with, and sometimes you have to have sex with boys you don’t want to have sex with. Maybe you’re pissy about it right after, but it doesn’t affect you long-term, you know?”

“He was really drunk. He had no way of knowing I didn’t want it.”

It happens to us with consistent hookups, first dates, boyfriends, and one-night stands alike. We have sex with guys, because sometimes it’s just easier to do it than to have the argument about not doing it. But no one talks about it. Talking about it makes it a big deal. It makes us feel like we’re whining. It makes us feel like we’re being dramatic. And we don’t want it to be dramatic. We don’t feel entirely violated. It doesn’t affect us forever. We just feel like we got the short end of the stick, and that sometimes, we have to do something we don’t want to do, out of politeness or social obligation. So why bring it up? Why risk wrongfully tagging a guy with a serious, heavy label he doesn’t deserve? And more importantly, why risk being wrongfully tagged as “the girl who cried rape,” when we’re not trying to say it was rape at all? We’re saying we don’t know what it was. We just didn’t like it. But by refusing to acknowledge the existence of these rape-ish situations, we’re continuing to subject ourselves to them indefinitely.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Fraternities, those rape pits of the modern academy where "raping, assaulting and treating women as substantially less than human is not only allowed, but encouraged," are so decidedly evil that, in the aftermath of Rolling Stone's imaginary rape exposé, many people called for them to be banned.

Yet--go figure--it's evil fraternity men who are now the ones leading the charge to insure that every claim of sexual assault is reported to the police. This is a requirement of the proposed Safe Campus Act, which would mandate that before any claim of sexual assault is investigated by the school internally, it must be turned over to law enforcement. Fraternities are pushing for the new law.

Can fraternities be any more depraved?

The usual suspects are having a hissy fit over the proposed law. See here and here. They are suggesting that somehow it would shield rapists and put women at greater risk. Why? Because it assures the accused fair processes.

Down, down, down the rabbit hole we tumble.

It makes sense that the sexual grievance industry clings to the status quo when you consider that they constructed the current college system and it's wholly consistent with their "always believe the woman" meme. The current system mandates that even if there is a reasonable doubt about the accuser's story, and even if the evidence in her favor isn't clear and convincing, her accusation can still be believed. Funny, the sexual grievance industry doesn't care that it's unfair to the accused that he can be labeled a "rapist" for the rest of his life under those circumstances. And none of that protects women from real rapists. See here.

Now, you need to understand something--and here's what the dopes who are complaining never mention. Inviting the police to investigate rape allegations subjects the young frat men to a world of possible trouble--I mean, big time trouble, much worse than being expelled. See, law enforcement doesn't always get it right, and they literally destroy the lives of a lot of young men. Can you say Duke lacrosse? Hofstra? Brian Banks? Jonathon Montgomery? Matt Folino? The young man hauled out of class because of a rape lie by a classmate he never met? The men randomly picked from Facebook and falsely accused of rape? The three men arrested for a false rape lie because a woman wanted an excuse for being late for work? Or how about Warren Blackwell who spent three years and four months behind bars for a false rape claim by a woman who had fabricated at least seven other allegations of sexual and physical assault--when Mr. Blackwell was finally released, he got a bill for £12,500 for "board and lodging" in prison. And Dwayne Dail--now there's one almost too horrific to speak about. The line forms to the left, and if you need a primer on wrongful arrest, start here.

The difference between the real world and the academy is that in the former, at least there's supposed to be due process even though a lot of times there isn't. In the latter, they don't even bother to pretend there's supposed to be due process. The frat brothers are saying they'll side with the very imperfect system where there's supposed to be due process, even though it puts them at great potential risk.

But can't have that on campus. That "due process" nonsense--it interferes with their "always believe the woman" agenda.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

The claim that "only 2 to 8 percent of rape accusations are false" is, itself, extremely misleading. In fact, of all the rape claims that can be definitively classified, a huge percentage are false.

The real problem with the "2 to 8 percent" canard is that it's invoked to chip away at the due process rights of the presumptively innocent, and for that reason alone, it is important to expose the lie.

Yet, we have idiocy like this, from someone named Danielle Campoamor, who says that even calling the lie into question is "a quantifiable example of our society's eagerness to be suspicious instead of supportive."

Actually, pointing out the lie is a "quantifiable example" of our society's eagerness to be honest.

Last week, we explained that the proposed Safe Campus Act--a law that would afford college men accused of sexual assault due process rights--has come under attack. Now the Huffington Post's Tyler Kingkade has chimed in. Kindkade can't hide his dislike for the proposed law. While ostensibly presenting "both" sides of the issue, his treatment is heavily tilted in favor of the side that doesn't like the proposed law.

Chief among the "grave reservations" Kingkade references is the provision that says a college's disciplinary machinery for alleged sexual assault can't be activated unless the accuser allows the school to report the alleged violation to law enforcement. The very headline of Mr. Kingkade's article is "Fraternity Groups Push Bills To Limit College Rape Investigations," and he quotes someone who posits that "colleges and universities would have grave reservations about any legislation that would limit our ability to ensure a safe campus."

The notion that involving professional law enforcement makes college campuses less safe than the current broken system--where "justice" is meted out by politicized, poorly trained, amateur disciplinary panels--is grossly deceptive and irresponsible. The present system does not keep women safe from rapists. Booting an alleged rapist off campus isn't going to stop him from slipping back onto campus if he wants to, or, more likely, from legally frequenting the same off-campus hangouts where he might have committed the very misdeed that got him expelled. If we were truly serious about protecting women from the purported epidemic of rape, we would insist that every report be turned over to the professionals in law enforcement who can actually protect women by removing rapists from society.

But the worst part about Mr. Kingkade's article is his refusal to acknowledge that the current system, in all its Star Chamber ramifications, enhances the likelihood that innocent young men are being punished for offenses they didn't commit. Kingkade writes: "The Safe and Fair Campus Acts could allow schools to set a much higher standard in these proceedings, potentially making it more difficult to punish offenders."

But Kingkade doesn't bother to mention the other side of the coin--that the much lower standard now mandated by the Department of Education potentially makes it easier to punish innocent men. That fact is either lost on Kingkade, or he is blithely unconcerned about the possibility of punishing innocent young men.

The world is topsy turvy. On this one issue, the otherwise progressive Huffington Post allies itself with law and order conservatives who typically have fought the expansion of individual due process rights at every turn. It does this because the group whose due process rights are at issue is young college men--a group that few people, aside from the young men's families, is concerned about.

Aside from putting innocent men at risk, the anti-due process crowd does no favors for survivors of sexual violence. A system so obviously in need of repair undermines the public's confidence in the results it reaches. When it's widely, and correctly, believed that students accused of sexual violence aren't being treated fairly, triers of fact on disciplinary boards may become all the more wary about punishing even those who deserve to be punished, compounding the injustices. That's not good for anyone.

Do these folks really want to keep women safe, or are they just parroting the talking points of the sexual grievance industry that justifies its existence by claiming women aren't safe?